ADAM MINTER: China censors offer to help bloggers by outing them

The other day China presented a new deal to its 538 million Internet users: Disclose your identities to your service providers, and we'll protect your privacy from everyone else.

Acceptance is not voluntary -- rather, it's law. But that isn't stopping China's editorialists, bloggers and microbloggers from openly contemplating a serious question: Can China's raucous, muckraking Internet culture survive if the anonymous microbloggers who enervate it are forced to disclose their identities to the often state-owned entities that allow them to surf in the first place?

For the Communist Party-run news outlets that make it their business to propagandize in favor of government policy, the answer is an enthusiastic yes. In the weeks and days before the law was revealed to the public, People's Daily, the self- declared mouthpiece of the Party ran several editorials that -- in retrospect -- were designed to lay the groundwork for restrictive Internet legislation. Of these, perhaps the most notable was published on Christmas Eve, under a pseudonymous byline. It argued:

"Without wings, the bird of freedom cannot fly high. Without rule of law, a free internet cannot go far .. . Cleaning up the online world demands the self-discipline of web users, but even more it demands the interventionist discipline of rule of law. Only by putting the "binds" of rule of law on the internet . . . can we possibly restrain irresponsible rumors, restrain the leakage of personal information, and make the internet clean again."

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The binds that China's lawgivers have in mind are several, including provisions restricting and penalizing spammers, fraudsters and online marketers. But the provision at the heart of the new law targets the average Internet user most directly. Under it, internet service providers will be required to verify the identities of new subscribers (subscribers will be allowed to maintain online pseudonyms) before service can be activated.

For most users, this won't be much of an inconvenience or change (540 million people are already online in China). But the cumulative effect of this provision, and an earlier March 2012 rule that China's rollicking microblogs verify the actual identities of their millions of oft-anonymous users have left many of China's netizens nervous. (Even though that earlier rule has been barely and badly enforced.)

Anonymity, after all, is one of the reasons that China's microblogs have become the nation's de facto town square, providing an unprecedented platform for discussions about politics and public affairs. At the same time, they've provided cover for a wave of amateur muckrakers to uncover, tweet about and re-tweet alleged corruption and other misdeeds among Chinese officialdom (often with the approval of Party-run media and some government officials). Lift the veil of anonymity so that Internet service providers and their regulators know who is doing the anti-corruption tweeting, and the anti-corruption tweeters will go silent, the argument goes.

"After the internet real-name registration comes into effect, online anti-corruption efforts will be a thing of the past," tweeted Duan Wanjin, a lawyer in Xian, via the Sina Weibo microblog on Saturday night. "In the future, if citizens want to report wrongdoers online, they'll have to handle themselves like suicide bombers, dying but succeeding for a righteous cause."

Neither People's Daily or other Party-run newspapers deny a state interest in the "real name" data collected by the service providers. Rather they shift the terms of the argument and offer the Orwellian argument that by disclosing their identities, China's netizens are actually enhancing their privacy. For example, the nationalist, English-language edition of the Global Times ran a Saturday editorial in support of the law, noting:

"It regulates for the first time that the State should protect online information that bears someone's personal identity and relates to privacy, along with punitive measures for violations."

In other words, the government can't be expected to protect your privacy if it doesn't know who you are. So tell us who you are.

For now, online Chinese reaction to the requirement has been decidedly muted, especially compared with the panicked reaction that real-name registration for microblogs produced in March 2012. It's possible that many netizens, having seen the lax enforcement of the microblogging requirements, are assuming that this latest step will wither as well. Or, just as likely, the fact that the new law only applies to new accounts means that most current Chinese microbloggers won't be affected by it, anyway. And then there's the holidays: China may not be a Christian nation, but it celebrates Christmas and New Year's Eve with a gusto that renders privacy concerns a low priority right now.

Whatever the explanation, the discussion hasn't topped any trending topic lists. Still, the issue isn't censored -- searching for "real name registration" brings up thousands of results on Chinese microblogs, the vast majority of which directly oppose the new law. Humor, especially in service of exposing government hypocrisy, is typically the first-line defense, with many microbloggers pointing out that People's Daily, a paper that regularly runs pseudonymous editorials, is the chief propagandist in promoting the end to their anonymity.

"Real-name registration has been put into practice on the Internet," tweeted a microblogger in Shenyang, using the Sina Weibo service. "So why isn't it being used in People's Daily?"

Adam Minter is Shanghai correspondent for Bloomberg's World View blog.